Friday, June 03, 2016

Casey Fien has been fantastic for the Dodgers since being called up from Oklahoma City a week ago. He has gotten into three games, and struck out seven of the ten batters he's faced; including Kris Bryant twice.

That's not to say that Fien is the answer to our bullpen prayers. After all, three innings of work is hardly enough to go on. Still, you gotta love the results.

Fien has shown us good control on a deceptive fastball that runs in the mid-90's and looks to have a bit of a sink to it. This causes batters to swing and miss more often than average. Scoutables.com tells me that his fastballs had 23% of swings miss; while 10% is league average. His last time out, on Wednesday, he faced four batters and mowed down three of them on swinging strikes. Hopefully, this trend continues.

In honor of his work thus far and since I had yet to officially welcome him to the team on this blog (save a post from a few weeks ago announcing his initial pickup), I decided to make a couple fantasy Baseball cards of him in Dodger Blue. For the card on the left I using a photo
taken by Jon SooHoo/LA Dodgers 2016 and the 1992 Leaf Baseball card design. For the Fien card on the right I grabbed another photo taken by Jon SooHoo/LA Dodgers 2016 and the 1997 Topps Baseball card design.

Now that you've seen the Dodgers base cards found in packs of Topps 2016 Archives Baseball card set, check out all of the inserts below. Of note, all of the Kenta Maeda autograph cards are inserted into packs.

Yesterday afternoon the Dodgers sent the 19-year old phenom out against the Cubs, and lost again. This time, however, Urias lasted a full five innings. Via Jon Weisman at Dodger Insider:

“I felt good,” Urias told reporters after the game (via SportsNet LA).
“My pitches were there. Overall I felt good, but those pitches I missed,
those were the ones they were able to capitalize on. … Those pitches
lacked control, and they connected on them.”

Overall, he threw 79 pitches, recorded four strike outs, walked one and coughed up five earned runs. Glaringly, Urias also gave up three homers; including a towering drive by Kris Bryant that hit the left field video board.

“He left a few balls up, and they made him pay,” Dave Roberts said.
“Julio is continuing to learn. I thought he threw the ball well early
on.

“I thought the game was a lot slower for him. I think he might have
been a bit frustrated by some of those flares, but I really believe that
he handled himself well, with great composure and great mound
presence.”

Listen to Julio speak about his second start here. Photo at the top via @Dodgers on twitter. Below are more links to check:

This Day in Dodgers History:
In 1989 the Dodgers played an 22 inning game at the Astrodome that lasted seven hours and fourteen minutes. BTW, the Dodgers lost the game 5-4, John Shelby went a remarkable 0 for 10 at the plate, Fernando Valenzuela played first base and infielder Jeff Hamilton was the losing pitcher.

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“There’s nothing like wearing a Dodger jersey. There’s nothing like it in sports. I don’t care that I’ve never been anywhere else. I don’t care. There’s nothing like wearing a Dodger jersey.” -- A.J. Ellis